


I'll Soon Be Naked

by shouldbeover



Category: Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-27
Updated: 2011-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeover/pseuds/shouldbeover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has no clean laundry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Soon Be Naked

"Hey, Sherlock," John called from the kitchen, "I'm going to the laundromat this afternoon. If you have anything you want to have washed, just stuff it in the bag by the door."

There was silence from the sitting room sofa where Sherlock had been maintaining squatter's rights for the previous three days.

"Sherlock?" John asked, poking his head out of the kitchen while he waited for the kettle to boil, "Did you hear me?"

There was a much put upon sigh from the recumbent figure, "I heard you John. Since contemplating the state of my laundry is too trivial an activity for my intellect, please take whatever you feel needs to be washed."

"No! I'm not rooting through your dirty knickers. If you want clean clothes you can either haul your own arse to your room and sort them, or you can do without."

John came out of the kitchen bearing his mug aloft, "And, I highly recommend that you strip and throw what you're wearing into the bag. You've been wearing it for three days."

"Are you suggesting that I am in any way unhygienic?" Sherlock exclaimed, sounding genuinely affronted. "I have bathed every day."

"Yes, and then proceeded to put on the same ratty t-shirt and pajama bottoms," John replied, sitting down at the table and flipping open his laptop.

"If you want to see me naked, John, there are better ways to go about it."

"If I…no. No," John tilted his head to one side, eyes wide in his patented dear-God-my-flatmate-is mad look. "Put something else on." Truth be told, John was more curious than he liked to admit about Sherlock's physique under those suits, but he wasn't about to use this moment to indulge that fantasy.

There was silence from the couch. John glanced up to see Sherlock looking distinctly uncomfortable. "What?"

Sherlock sighed, sat up and rubbed his hands through his hair. "…don't…anything…clean…on," he mumbled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear that."

"I said, I don't have anything else clean to put on."

John threw back his head and laughed, roared actually. If asked, Sherlock would have said that he genuinely enjoyed the sound of John's laugh, but today it prompted him to throw the Union Jack pillow at his friend's head.

"Oh, shut up. I miscalculated."

"How do you miscalculate your laundry?"

"I believed that I had adequate shirts and suits, but…a few…incidents went in…unexpected directions, and I found myself going through clothing faster than I planned."

"Wait, you plan to use up all your clothes before you do anything about it? You calculate it down to the day? And I presume the incidents would be the one involving battery acid and the one involving testing bank-bag dye packs?"

Sherlock threw himself violently back down on the sofa and looked pointedly at a copy of The Big Issue that had been used to pass him information from his homeless network a few cases back, and which had joined the other detritus strewn about the flat thereafter.

"I expected some suits back from the dry-cleaners, but they evidently had issues with some of the stains and have been delayed," muttered Sherlock sullenly.

"So you don't have any loungewear either?"

"…experiment…flammability…fiber content…"

"Really, Sherlock, if you're losing your voice, you could just write it down on a pad," John smirked, knowing full well what Sherlock was trying not to say.

Sherlock tossed the paper over his shoulder and flopped on his side, back to the room.

"Fine, you can borrow some of my clothes." John left his laptop, went up to his room and fetched a shirt and shorts.

Back in the sitting room he dropped them on Sherlock's head and returned to his laptop.

Sherlock lay still for several minutes, head still under the clothes, before he finally got up and went off to his room with a huff.

He emerged five minutes later looking down at the clothes he was wearing with distaste.

"Frankie Say, John, really? You've had this shirt for twenty-seven years?"

"No, I picked it up at the Oxfam shop. Someone else had it for twenty-seven years."

Sherlock looked even more appalled, if that were possible. John wondered if Sherlock had ever actually been inside an Oxfam shop in his life.

"Wait, twenty-seven years? I was thirteen, you were what, eight? Who let you listen to Frankie Goes to Hollywood?"

"Mycroft liked them."

John gaped for a moment and then burst into guffaws again. This time Sherlock cracked a small grin. John could always get him to laugh at Mycroft's expense.

"And the shorts?" Sherlock went on when John's laughter had died down. "Did you get them from some charity as well?"

The shorts in question were bright blue with a large orange and pink Hawaiian floral print.

"Nah, mates in Afghanistan. We organized a luau—everyone had to wear outrageous shorts."

Sherlock smiled briefly again, resigned apparently to his temporary penance, and returned to the sofa.

However, John should have known that it wouldn't last. He tried to focus on his emails, but every few minutes there was a deep, frustrated sigh from the sofa. Sherlock fidgeted, fluffed the cushion, sat up, lay back down, sat up again, and finally sprawled with his feet on the coffee table.

For a minute John believed that he might get some silence, but he was quickly disabused of this notion when Sherlock started tapping his toes against the table top. He flexed his toes and then curled them. He beat a tattoo with his big toes. He rolled his feet to the outside and then back over the instep. He added the balls of his feet and his heels into the mix and was soon rocking out a drum solo that would have done Keith Moon or Roger Taylor proud.

John rubbed his palms into his eyes. "Oh, for the love of God, Sherlock. What the hell is the matter?"

"Bored. I can't go out looking like this. Why haven't you gone to the laudromat yet? You could stop at the drycleaners as well and see if my suits are ready."

"I'm just going to finish my tea, answer a few emails and then I'll go out. Calm down. Watch crap telly. Check your own email. Download new apps for your phone. Go play with your chemistry set, but stop fidgeting."

After a few minutes of silence, there was some shuffling and suddenly a white t-shirt smacked John in the face.

"What the bloody hell, Sherlock!"

"Can't wear it. Feels…icky. All those other people's skins touching it."

"Icky? You poke cadavers, and you think a perfectly clean shirt is icky? Or, are you saying that you can deduct people's lives from a used shirt?"

John looked over at Sherlock and wished he hadn't. If he'd ever wondered what Sherlock looked like shirtless, he now had his answer.

He looked stunning.

The muscles of his chest were so much more defined that John would have thought. A small triangle of sparse, dark hair lay between two solid pectoral muscles. While the muscles of his abdomen couldn't be called a six-pack, they were taut and visible beneath his white skin. Worse, he was lying down, one leg crossed over the other bent one so that John had a good view of finely shaped and muscled legs, each dark hair standing in relief against that ivory skin, the board shorts gaping around the darkness leading up his thighs.

Quite frankly, it was annoyingly erotic.

"No, I can't deduce information from a used shirt, but I can make some suppositions, based on the type of shirt, the wear and tear it's endured, where you bought it. WHY you bought it."

"Sherlock, shut-up. I'm going to the laudromat now."

But annoyingly Sherlock leapt up to stand in front of him.

Much, much too close to him.

Which wasn't new, per se, but he hadn't been shirtless in the past. Or wearing shorts that left his legs bare.

"Why does it bother you, John?"

"It doesn't bother me. Wait, why doesn't what bother me?"

"Why does my being shirtless make you want to leave the flat in a hurry?"

"It has nothing to do with you being shirtless, it's just that it's getting late, and I want to be done before it gets dark, and you know, well, you probably don't know, but you have to get there early for the best machines, and I should probably pick up some more soap on the way and I could grab dinner on the way back, only that would be hard to carry, or you could meet me somewhere and we could carry your clothes, I mean, the clothes back together, and— eeep!"

Because Sherlock leant right in to John's face and said, "I can't go out, John. I told you. I have nothing to wear. Unless you want me to go out like this. Nearly naked. Do you want me naked, John?" Sherlock's voice growled John's name right into his ear.

John grabbed Sherlock by the arms, fingers biting into Sherlock's biceps.

"Get out of my way, Sherlock, or do something useful," John snarled, pissed now at whatever game Sherlock thought he was playing, whatever deductions and suppositions he thought he was making.

"My God, John, I know you're not brilliant, but do I have to wear a sign?"

"Wait, what…"

But John's question was cut off by Sherlock's mouth pressing against his, as passionate and insistent as everything else the man did. And wildly inappropriate, but that thought was disappearing down a long tunnel the harder Sherlock kissed him, and then he was wrapping his arms around Sherlock's slender torso to feel the muscles along Sherlock's back and kissing just as fiercely back.

Sherlock was fumbling to get John at least as naked as he was, and John found himself being manhandled, kissed and fondled towards Sherlock's bedroom. Why not the couch, he wasn't sure, but he didn't have the willpower to fight.

By the time they hit Sherlock's bed, John was tangled up in his own t-shirt and somehow had his hands down the front of those ridiculous shorts to find Sherlock hard, and damn, he hadn't mentioned that he didn't have clean underwear, but then Sherlock was working his hand down John's shorts as well, and John's ability to analyze the situation was gone in a tangle of hands and hot breath and the feel of warm skin pressed against his, and trying to get enough space between them to move hands, and oh, fuck that felt good, why did Sherlock know so perfectly that would feel so good, but John was apparently figuring out what made Sherlock feel good too, because Sherlock was shaking now and yes, pulling his mouth away long enough to gasp, eyes wide as he came in John's hand, still dressed in the shorts, and the sound plus the insistent feel of long fingers sliding erratically against his hard cock in the confines of his underwear was enough and he was coming too, crashing his nose rather painfully against Sherlock's shoulder as they struggled to stay with each other through it all.

"Oh, my God," gasped John, when he could say anything at all. He rolled onto his back. He was sticky and sweaty and had just gotten off with his maddeningly beautiful flatmate with barely any discussion at all.

And that's when his eye was caught by a perfectly pressed white shirt hanging in a dry cleaning bag from the door of Sherlock's wardrobe. A pair of black pants were also on a hanger in a bag.

"You BASTARD! You sodding, sodding bastard! You lying, sodding bastard!"

He looked over at his very smug (and post-orgasmic) flatmate who was regarding him through slitted eyes.

"I'm not the only liar, John. You have five clean t-shirts that you could have given me. Three of which are solid colors, another which has a Union Jack on it and one that inexplicably says 'Property of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.' You also have three pairs of khaki shorts which you could have offered me—"

"You can keep those shorts, by the way."

"—but you didn't. You offered me clothing that you knew I would find distasteful."

"It was a joke. I didn't think you'd find them so unpleasant that you'd strip."

"At this point, to have gotten into your pants, so to speak, I would have lain about naked if I didn't think the cold might show me at a disadvantage."

"Well, thanks for that. You could just ask."

Sherlock smiled, "I wasn't entirely sure what your reaction would be. Provocation seemed the best course of action. If you were indifferent, then my question would be answered. If not…"

"Sherlock, what question?"

"Whether you wanted me as much as I wanted you."

Oh. "Oh."

John rolled onto his side to face Sherlock. "Well, the answer is clearly yes, but next time, just ask—don't lie or manipulate me or do any of your clever tricks."

"John?"

"Yes."

"I want you, do you want me?"

"Yes. Now get dressed. You're coming with me to the laudromat."


End file.
